


Vodka Lullaby

by SheDragonOfTheWest



Category: Nightwish
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Messing with song titles, Songfic, lots and lots of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 21:30:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4721141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheDragonOfTheWest/pseuds/SheDragonOfTheWest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Songfic, based on the song "Whisky Lullaby". Tarja and Tuomas, the poet and his muse, can't live without each other... and they learn it the hard way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vodka Lullaby

_She put him out_

_Like the burning end of a midnight cigarette_

_She broke his heart_

_He spent his whole life trying to forget_

“Tuomas, I’ve told you. It’s over. I have a husband now” she took a step back away from him.

“Come on! We started doing this way before you two even started dating, and we never stopped. I don’t know why we should now.”

Saying that, he pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her waist once more and searching her lips. Tarja pushed him away.

“Because now it’s different” she whispered “I’m married to him.”

“What difference does it make?”

“Everything. I’ve made a promise to stay faithful to him. Cheating on my boyfriend is one thing, but breaking a family-“

“A family?” he frowned “You consider yourselves a family?”

“Well, we hopefully will be one someday…”

A gasp escaped the keyboarder’s mouth. He had always thought if she ever wanted a child, he would be the father. That Marcelo guy was just a past-time, an alibi. If they had never made their relationship official, it was just for the band’s sake. Now, however, he was beginning to wonder whether the woman he had loved for so many years might have been playing with his heart.

“You’re not serious!” he forced a chuckle, which was more like a defense mechanism to hide his fear “You’re not seriously implying that you’re in love with him, are you?”

The singer just looked down, sucking on her bottom lip. Her silence felt like an ice dagger piercing Tuomas’s heart.

“Are you?” he repeated, hoping that she would snap out of whatever trance she was in and tell him that he was and would always be the one.

Yet Tarja never answered. And that’s when the destruction began.

 

_We watched him drink his pain away_

_A little at a time_

_But he never could get drunk enough_

_To get her off his mind_

_Until the night…_

The poet lost his inspiration completely. No-one saw him cry, but the red in his dreamy blue eyes said it all. The tension amongst the band members – especially between two certain band members – was unbearable and eventually resulted in Tarja being fired. After she left, Tuomas started drinking even more heavily than before. He had always been quite a party person, just like the rest of them, but even his friends noticed that he was losing control. The keyboarder was rarely seen sober anymore; while he was intoxicated, the pain disappeared. It was as though alcohol had become the only remedy, the only thing that kept him going. On the other hand, nevertheless, it was beginning to interfere with his creativity and his personal life. Sometimes he would be late for rehearsals, or not turn up at all. If he ever had any energy left to write music, his compositions were darker than ever and often made no sense at all. The rest of the band tried to reason with him, but he just wouldn’t listen; some of them were actually considering quitting. In fact, if they still hadn’t, it was because they knew that would destroy him even more. After all, Nightwish was all he had…

_He took that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger_

_And finally drank away her memory_

_Life is short, but this time it was bigger_

_Than the strength he had to get up off his knees_

Anette sighed, turning back to the other two men as she moved away from the door.

“Nothing. Either he can’t hear me or he doesn’t want to.”

“I’ll try” Marco suggested, knocking harder and yelling “Tuomas! We know you are there, so stop being a baby and let us in!”

He hadn’t attended their last three rehearsals. Neither had he answered the phone or attempted to contact them in any way. That made them all worry and, in the end, Marco and Anette had decided to visit him and see what was going on. Emppu, who used to be his best friend, felt that it was also his duty to go with them. On the other hand, Jukka was still convinced that it had to be a bad hangover and there was no reason to fear.

“Guys, look what I found!” Emppu called suddenly, holding a small key in his hand “I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me before. He told me once that he always keeps an extra key under the mat.

“You hear that, mate?” Marco shouted through the closed door “We’re coming in.”

Both moved aside so the smaller man could unlock the door. As he pushed it open, revealing the inside of the house, none of them could hold back a gasp.

“Oh my god!” Anette covered her mouth “What have you done?!”

_We found him with his face down in the pillow_

_With a note that said “I’ll love her till I die”_

_And when we buried him beneath the willow_

_The angels sang a vodka lullaby_

 

Tuomas was passed out on the couch. If they didn’t know better, they would have thought he was just sleeping peacefully; dreaming of better times, as judging by the smile on his frozen lips. However, as soon as they touched him, any optimistic thought was quickly erased from their minds. Later, when the doctors confirmed their fears, they learnt that apparently he had mixed the vodka he had been clinging to in the past years with sleeping pills. All that remained of Nightwish was a sheet of paper he had in his hands when they found him; it looked like a desperate love poem, probably the last song he ever wrote.

 

_Rumors flew_

_But nobody knew how much she blamed herself_

_For years and years_

_She tried to hide the vodka in her breath_

The news about Tuomas’s death spread quickly and of course crossed the oceans to reach Tarja. And with that, numerous rumors about him having committed suicide because of her appeared. Many fans who were mourning their favorite band accused her of leading him to the path of self-destruction. Yet what hurt the singer most wasn’t all the fingers pointing at her, or the loss of one of the most – if not _the_ most – important men in her life. What was shattering Tarja from the inside was guilt. Even without all those nasty urban myths and all the critical looks she got, a part of her felt as though she had killed him. She had been the one to ruin his life by falling for another man. She had been the one who rejected him in spite of knowing that she was in love with him and would always be.

_She finally drank her pain away_

_A little at a time_

_But she never could get drunk enough_

_To get him off her mind_

_Until the night…_

And, as if she unconsciously wanted to follow her former lover’s steps, she began to fill the hole in her soul with vodka. Ironically, she had always rejected alcohol and cigarettes because they could damage her vocal chords. But now… it didn’t matter anymore. All throughout her career, many people had told her how much they loved her music and that her voice was unique… but no-one had made her feel as special and showed her what a treasure she had like Tuomas did. Their artistic connection was abnormally strong, and so was the attraction between their bodies and souls, no matter how much they had kept it a secret. Now, without him there… who did she have to sing for?

_She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger_

_And finally drank away his memory_

_Life is short, but this time it was bigger_

_Than the strength she had to get up of her knees_

“Have you been drinking again?” Marcelo questioned, his arms crossed in front of his chest.

“Who are you, my father?” she slurred instead of answering.

Sighing, he followed her to the bathroom, where she was wetting her face. The way she held onto the basin made it obvious that she was about to lose her balance. Her husband shook his head.

“You can’t go on like this, Tarja. This is hurting you and-“

“And ruining my voice?” she tried to guess, glaring at him over the mirror “I’m sick of hearing that! Does anyone care about anything else about me that’s not my singing?”

He froze at that accusation. She would always say that her voice was her most precious possession and that music was her life. What had made her change her mind? He took one step closer to her, placing his hands on her shoulders from behind.

“Tarja, honey” he said softly “Why have you been acting so strange lately? If there’s something bothering you, just tell me.”

“Just because I’m tired of being just a singer I’m acting weird?” she snapped “Work, work and work! That’s what my whole life is about!”

“What are you saying? That’s not what I meant!” he blinked, wrapping his arms around her “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what the problem is.”

“Hah! Help me?! No-one can help me!”

With those words, she escaped from his embrace and stormed out, leaving him even more puzzled than before.

_We found her with her face down in the pillow_

_Clinging to his picture for dear life_

_We laid her next to him beneath the willow_

_While the angels sang a vodka lullaby_

 

In the end, alcohol got the best of her as well. Not only did it hurt her throat, as everyone had warned her, but also the rest of her body. After months of struggle, she lost the battle against her addiction and left this world in a suspiciously similar way to his – her expressive emerald eyes closed and a tender smile on her face as she embraced an old photograph of the two of them. Therefore, still many people believe that those two poor souls met again somewhere beyond mortal life; somewhere where they forgave each other and can finally be happy together.

 

**The End.**


End file.
